The United Nations General Assembly has backed an Africa-led initiative to promote world maps that more accurately represent the relative size of countries and continents, addressing distortions that have long made Africa appear smaller than it actually is.
The resolution, led by Togo on behalf of African states and supported by the African Union, was adopted on September 4 with 164 votes in favor, one against and six abstentions. The United States was the only country to vote against the measure. The resolution promotes the use of the Equal Earth projection, which represents the relative area of land masses more accurately than the widely used Mercator projection.
The issue stems from the way a three-dimensional Earth is represented on a flat map. Developed in the 16th century, the Mercator projection was designed primarily for navigation and has an important advantage: it preserves directions. But it also increasingly enlarges land masses as they approach the North and South Poles, while areas closer to the equator appear relatively smaller.
The effect is particularly striking in the case of Africa. The continent covers about 30.4 million square kilometers, making it roughly 14 times larger than Greenland. Yet on a conventional Mercator map, the two can appear surprisingly similar in size. The same distortion affects the perceived scale of other countries and regions at different latitudes.
Togo’s initiative seeks to encourage governments, schools, international organizations and technology companies to use area-based projections such as Equal Earth when showing the relative size of territories. The resolution is not legally binding and does not call for the elimination of Mercator, which remains useful for maritime and aerial navigation because of its directional properties.
Togo plans to replace its own school geography materials with maps based on more accurate projections by the end of 2026. The government also intends to engage other African states, international organizations and technology companies involved in mapping and location-based services to encourage wider adoption.
For Africa, the change would have a simple but important effect: the continent would be shown closer to its actual geographic scale in the maps used in classrooms, institutions and digital platforms. The initiative does not make Africa larger. It changes the projection so that its size relative to the rest of the world is represented more accurately.
The UN vote therefore marks a push for greater accuracy in one of the most basic tools used to understand geography. Togo’s campaign now moves from a national education reform to a broader effort to make the true scale of the world’s land masses more visible.
